


no sound but the wind

by BellumGerere



Series: ruthless calculus [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Normandy Crash Site Mission, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), not sure what's happening here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26880928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellumGerere/pseuds/BellumGerere
Summary: After weeks of putting it off, Shepard decides it's finally time to visit Alchera. It goes about as well as everyone expects it to.
Relationships: Female Shepard & Garrus Vakarian, Jeff "Joker" Moreau & Female Shepard, Thane Krios/Female Shepard
Series: ruthless calculus [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960111
Kudos: 10





	no sound but the wind

**Author's Note:**

> i've been working on this one since like august and i'm still not sure i know what the ""plot"" is so i'm just going to put it here and hope for the best lmao. also there wasn't supposed to be anything overtly romantic in here but. not to be one of those people who's like 'the characters do what they want' but sometimes they do. this also includes some game dialogue that was repurposed into the last scene, just in case that really bothers anyone lol
> 
> also i have no idea if anyone is like in character because i've been working on this for two months and i honestly can't even tell anymore
> 
> just like with the warning on the first part of the series, no actual self-harm happens here, but it is talked about (or around, considering how celia is) so please don't read if that might be upsetting to you! -bel

They put off going to the crash site as long as they possibly can. Even when they’re already in Omega, when it wouldn’t be out of the way to stop there, Shepard insists they move on, that something else is more pressing and they’ll get to it when they have time. She starts ignoring the Alliance’s emails with even more insistence than she had before, throwing herself instead into helping her crew and dealing with the occasional gang hideout. Though it’s rare for her to speak to anyone about personal matters—her own, at least—it quickly becomes evident to everyone onboard that she’s avoiding it. Eventually, though, after they’re forced to return to Omega to deliver a package, she goes to the cockpit, hovering behind Joker and more tense than he’s ever seen her, and says “Take us there.”

When they’re positioned over the crash site and the shuttle pilots are preparing to leave, Shepard comes back up to him. She’s wearing her helmet when she gets there, and it only takes him a moment to realize why; when she removes it to look at him, her face is bare. Circles from a lack of sleep prominent under her eyes, no lipstick to cover up the way she bites her lips, to hide the fresh blood. He’s surprised she’ll even let _him_ see her like this—though he’s known her the longest of anyone on the ship. Maybe not that surprising. Still, it’s been a long time since she let that mask of hers down.

“Ready when you are, Commander,” he says, and other than a quiet huff at the use of her title, she’s silent, staring at the control panels in front of him. It stretches on long enough that he’s tempted to ask what she’s doing up here, why she isn’t in the shuttle bay already. She’s put the thing off for months; better to rip the bandage off now and be done with it. They could be on their way within an hour or two if she’s quick. He gets the feeling that saying all of this would be insensitive, though, and while it’s normally difficult to throw her off, he doesn’t want to risk it now.

“They want me to pick a spot for the memorial,” she says, gripping her helmet just a bit tighter, not meeting his eyes. “I know none of us have seen it yet, but if you have any thoughts, now would be the time.”

Right. He’d almost forgotten about the damned memorial, in the wake of everything else. He’d been associating the trip with the need to recover dog tags from the crew, much like he suspected Shepard had. Asking her to choose where exactly the gaudy statue went up at the site of her death…Joker’s never been particularly protective of Shepard, or anyone—and god knows she certainly doesn’t need him to be—but the audacity of the request is enough to make his blood boil.

“Well, if you want to know where the Alliance can shove it, I’ve got a few ideas.” She doesn’t laugh at the joke, and he’s not expecting her to, but the barest hint of a grin flickers across her face, and it’s enough for now. “If you’re looking for a _serious_ answer, you’ve got the wrong guy. But honestly—just let them stick it somewhere and be done with it. Don’t stay longer than you have to.”

Shepard lifts an eyebrow; though the expression is meant to be skeptical, to him it just looks tired, exhausted in a way she doesn’t normally allow crew members—or anyone, really—to see. “For someone who claims not to be serious, that was surprisingly serious advice,” she says, and lifts her helmet up to put it back on. “I’ll be sure to take it under consideration.”

~

When Shepard had told him several days prior about the request she’d received from the Alliance—about what they wanted her to do—Thane had thought at first that it was a particularly morbid joke. Why, out of all the people who were qualified to carry out such a task, would they insist it be her? Why make her return to the place of her death, when none of them had any idea of the effects it might have on her? She’s mentioned before, often in passing, that most of her higher-ups hadn’t been particularly fond of her, but surely there would be no reason for this kind of cruelty. Even if it made sense to send her on a practical level, it didn’t in any other way.

It is even more concerning when, as the shuttle is being prepared for departure and she stops by Life Support at his request, she tells him she is going down alone.

“There’s nothing else down there,” she says before he can begin to protest, watching him from a spot near the door. She’s already fully armored, helmet covering her face, and her voice comes out muffled. “No signs of life. I can be in and out before half the ship realizes I’m gone.”

He can’t see her face—though Shepard is unreadable on her best days anyway—but the flatness of her voice makes the worry in him spike, as does the way she holds herself, not moving a muscle even to shift her weight. “Are you sure this is wise?” Perhaps it’s not the time to question her choices, but the words slip out anyway, and he hopes that she’ll see them for the genuine concern that they are, and not arguing for the sake of arguing. Once she’s made up her mind, nothing will change it, and he wants only to see her safe and away from this place that has already caused her so much pain.

A thick silence hangs between them at the end of the question, stretching on long enough that he’s of half a mind to apologize before she finally says “No.” It’s a rare admission, and he doubts anyone else would have even gotten that much out of her, save perhaps Garrus. It would take no small amount of willful ignorance, though, not to notice the way she sometimes looks at him, that she spends more time in Life Support than anywhere on the ship besides her own quarters. They’ve been dancing around it, this attraction between them; her comment about being _just friends_ still echoes in his mind when the quiet of the room grows unbearable at night, replacing older memories. He dwells on it more than he should. For a moment, he’s struck with the urge to say something about it then—give her something else to focus on, anything else. But now is not the time, and she’s already shifting, turning back towards the door, like if she stands there much longer she’ll abandon the outing entirely. He can’t help but think that might be the better course of action.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, and he doesn’t know whether she’s trying to convince him or herself. “Straight down and straight back up. Besides,” she jokes, though the attempt at humor is contradicted by how steady and even she keeps her voice, “it’s nothing I haven’t done before.”

~

An hour passes. Then two. At two and a half, Thane finally leaves the still silence of Life Support and makes his way to the mess hall, hoping to overhear some details, even the slightest hint as to what might be taking her so long. It’s possible, he supposes, that she’s already returned and doesn’t want to see him. He doesn’t want to overstate his importance to her, after all, and she’s proven herself time and time again to be a solitary person. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on in the mess hall; a few of the crew members are sitting around one of the larger tables, and glance up when he walks in, but return to their conversation soon enough. It’s an odd hour, close to the beginning of the Normandy’s night cycle, and most of the ship’s occupants have already retired for the night. If Shepard were here, though—she was always up later than nearly everyone else. She’d told him once that it was the only time when the ship sounded right, and though he still isn’t sure what she means by that, he knows it is nearing the time that she normally comes down to see him.

But after a few minutes, thrown off by his presence, the crew members slip back to their quarters one or two at a time, and soon he’s the only one there, staring at the spot where they’d been sitting and hoping to hear the sound of the elevator doors. It doesn’t come. What he does here is a sound from the other direction—another pair of doors, this one leading to the main battery. He doesn’t move from his spot when Garrus comes into view, nor does he look directly at him, though he wants more than anything to ask if he knows where Shepard is. If there’s anyone who would know, it would be him.

“Krios,” Garrus says, and he nods in acknowledgement as Garrus goes over to the cabinets, rummaging through them one at a time like he’s looking for something specific—slow, methodical. He makes it through the entire upper row before he sighs, turns to Thane, and jerks his head back towards the battery. Thane follows him back through the doors with no small amount of apprehension; whatever would prompt this kind of secrecy can’t possibly be good. The doors hiss shut behind him, and for a moment he stands, hands clasped behind his back, glancing over at the small cot in the corner of the room and feeling a flash of amusement that he apparently wasn’t the only one who had foregone the more comfortable bunks of the crew quarters.

“Has she gone down yet?” Garrus asks. It takes Thane a moment to register the meaning of the words—he doesn’t know any more of Shepard’s whereabouts than he does. Anxiety spikes in his chest, and he’s fleetingly grateful that non-drell often find their faces so difficult to read. It allows him to mask the surprise that twists uncomfortably in him.

“Yes. Two and a half hours ago.”

He watches as the plates of Garrus’ brow draw downward in an expression of confusion and concern similar to his own. “That can’t be right,” he says. “If she left two and a half hours ago, she’d be back by now. Even taking into account looking for tags—”

“For tags?” He almost regrets interrupting, but Garrus doesn’t seem to mind, just shifts his weight and tries to avoid looking at him. Thane doesn’t blame him; he has, after all, spent the past several minutes doing the same thing.

“Yeah, that was part of the message the Alliance sent her. She read it to me when she got it.” He pitched his voice lower in what Thane suspected was an imitation of Hackett, whose voice he himself had only heard once. “ _We thought this news might be important to you, but we also have an ulterior motive._ They said it themselves, right there. They just wanted her to do the work for them.” Throughout the rant, the tones of aggression in his subvocals have been steadily rising—Shepard might not have noticed it, had she been here, but Thane certainly does, and he finds himself feeling much the same. “Besides all this— _memorial_ nonsense, there are still crew members unaccounted for. They asked her to look for signs of them so they can notify the families.” A brief, uncomfortable pause as the both of them tried to rein in their anger. “It’s been long enough that we assume she won’t be looking for bodies.”

“Ah.” He wishes, now that he knows the true extent of what she’s been sent to do, that he had been more insistent she remain on the ship. Perhaps he should have enlisted Garrus’ help in the matter; Shepard wouldn’t listen to him, but she might listen to her closest friend. Even as he thinks it, though, he knows it would have been futile. It’s one of the most notable things about her, one of the things he picked up on less than a week into his time with her crew—she feels the need to do everything herself.

“…anyway.” Garrus clears his throat. “Even taking that into account, she should have been back by now if she left that long ago. We should have at least heard from the shuttle.”

Thane nods in agreement, channeling his focus into keeping his posture rigid and upright. He doesn’t want to let on how worried he is, lest others start to worry as well. In front of Garrus, he knows he needn’t bother, but the habit is hard to break, and it’s reassuring, in a way, to know that he looks calm, even if it’s the last thing he feels. But it isn’t long before the doubt begins to creep back in; neither of them know what to do in a situation like this, and the surface of Alchera is freezing, and if something happened and the shuttle pilot couldn’t get her back to the ship in time…

“Garrus?” They both start at the sound of Miranda’s voice over the intercom, though while Thane merely flinches, Garrus turns around as though he fully expects her to be at the door. “I need you in my office. _Now._ It’s about Shepard.”

Both of them are moving before she even finishes her sentence, striding back down the hallway and making the sharp turn to the door. As they wait for it to open, Garrus looks over at him and repeats the same jerking of his head, this time at the spinning lock in front of them. The relief that washes over him is short-lived, but he’s glad that he’ll at least be able to hear whatever is going on firsthand, instead of having to find out later. When the door finally opens he doesn’t hesitate to follow Garrus in. Miranda raises an eyebrow at him being there, but doesn’t comment.

“They lost her.”

_Lost._

The word bounces around in his mind, growing louder with each passing second, infuriating in its lack of specificity. _Lost_ could mean any number of things—none of them good, but some certainly worse than others. Thankfully, he isn’t the only one whose thoughts have steered that way. “What do you mean they _lost_ her?” Garrus demands, once a moment has passed for the shock to settle in. “How do you lose an entire person?”

Miranda sighs and brings a hand to her temple briefly, the only indication that this is affecting her at all. Thane would admire the tight grasp she has on her personal reactions if his chest were not so tight, if breathing hadn’t become twice as difficult as it already was.

“The shuttle pilot says he searched the wreckage and found a spot that had been marked for the monument, but no sign of Shepard herself. We tried to trace her using her suit, but there are no readings coming through and the tracking’s been disabled. Her own doing, I suspect.” A chime sounds from the terminal in front of her, and she leans forward to glance at the message before her eyes return to them. “Someone needs to go down after her, and out of everyone here, you know her best.”

The rest of that line of reasoning is clear enough to all of them that she doesn’t continue. The irritated growl has crept back into Garrus’ subvocals when he does speak again. “How quickly can they have another shuttle ready?”

“A few minutes. Ten, at the most.”

Garrus nods tersely, turning to leave without another word, but this time Thane hesitates to follow him. He waits until Miranda looks back up to ask “How long did it take for you to realize you couldn’t find her?”

The _you_ is general—every damned person that was supposed to be part of this expedition is at fault, as far as he’s concerned—but her face closes off like he’s throwing the blame on her personally, and she looks back down at her terminal with a concentration so steady it must be faked. He lingers a few seconds more, hoping for an answer but not expecting one, before he resigns himself to waiting in Life Support for news of her. If Shepard hadn’t wanted him to come down with her in the first place, she certainly won’t want to see him now. The door is about to slide shut behind him when he finally gets a reply.

“Longer than it should have.”

~

Once he lands on Alchera, it takes Garrus less than five minutes to figure out where Shepard is. Part of him wants to scream when he sees the nearly-intact cockpit; even if he hadn’t thought to follow the footprints tracking back and forth through the wreckage—which the pilot was either too panicked or too stupid to think of—that’s the first place he would have looked. It would make the most sense to anyone who knows her well, though he can count on one hand the number of people on the ship who know her well. Despite his certainty, though, a flood of relief still runs through him when he nears the chair and can make out her silhouette.

The relief is short-lived, though. On the floor next to her is a pile of plastic bags, each sealed tight. The dog tags, he realizes, from the missing crew members. There are more of them there than he wants to think about. Shepard herself is curled up in the chair, legs drawn to her chest and head resting on her knees. It looks like she’s wrapped herself around something, though he can’t tell what it is.

“Celia?” He says her name softly at first, almost afraid to disturb her but simultaneously hoping the use of her first name will grab her attention. For a moment, there’s no response at all, and that’s when the panic sets in. If there had been no readings coming from her suit, had she shut off all the systems herself? He hadn’t even let himself consider the possibility until now, had let himself be reassured by the thought that she wouldn’t do something so drastic when the crew was counting on her to lead the mission against the Collectors. Then again, he had also assumed she would put this off until their main objective had been accomplished. He doesn’t want to be wrong on both counts.

He says her name again, a bit louder this time and accompanied with the press of his hand around her shoulder. Even through his own suit, he can tell she’s far colder than she should be, colder than the suit normally would have allowed for. She lifts her head to look at him, though, and all the breath leaves him at once, because when says his name her voice is soft and cracked, and she sounds like she’s seconds away from passing out, and the thing that she’s curled around is her old helmet. He lets out a string of swears that he hopes is too quick and quiet for her translator to parse as he leans down to pick her up. Despite the fact that she can take over a room with her presence, she feels like nothing in his arms.

“The tags—”

“Will be there later,” he interrupts, about two seconds away from throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out like that. He doesn’t, though, won’t let himself be that careless with her, especially since he won’t know the extent of the harm she’s done to herself until he can get her back to the medbay, which could take another half hour at worst. “And you could have avoided all of this by asking me or Tali to go with you.”

“Didn’t want to.” She’s mumbling now, and he can barely pick apart the words through the static of the comms. “Not your responsibility.”

“Well, it isn’t yours, either!” he exclaims, only to be met with silence. She’s turning her head into his shoulder, still cradling the busted helmet in her arms like it’s the only thing that anchors her. He wants to throw it back into the wreckage. He wants to call Hackett and give him a piece of his mind. But those are secondary desires now; she can’t afford even the slightest delay. “Look, just—don’t say anything. We can argue later. Just try to stay awake.”

He thinks he hears her laugh, but he can’t be sure, and he’s already approaching the second shuttle that brought him down, barking orders to the driver who’s been waiting beside it. She had let slip once, in a fit of anger after they escaped the Collector ship, that she sometimes wishes Cerberus hadn’t brought her back. He’s been worried ever since that, with no forewarning, she’ll try to make that wish a reality. With any luck, that isn’t going to happen now.

~

When Garrus returns with Shepard, they take her straight to the medbay. Thane can hear the commotion from Life Support, where he’s taken up a position admittedly a little closer to the door than he normally would, and though every muscle in his body is tensed, ready to follow after them and demand to know her condition, he forces himself to wait. Getting in the way won’t do her any good now, and besides, if things are as dire as he fears they are, someone will tell him—right?

He finds it nearly impossible to stay still, though, and so once the noise has died down he takes the elevator to the next deck up and paces along the wall to the side, hoping that the added distance will lessen the temptation to check on her too soon. Yeoman Chambers gives him a sympathetic look when she sees him but ignores him otherwise, and he’s grateful for that. He doesn’t know that he has it in him to make small talk right now.

Sometime during his fifth pass around the deck, though, he becomes aware of a sound other than the quiet humming of the ship and Chambers’ fingers on her keyboard—someone shouting, albeit somewhat quietly. It’s coming from the direction of the cockpit, and so the next time he nears it he turns down that hallway, sticking close to the wall out of habit. The voice, unsurprisingly belongs to Joker; what does surprise him as he nears the cockpit is the voice coming from the other end of the comm he’s opened.

“It wasn’t a decision we took lightly, I can assure you,” Hackett said, sounding, perhaps, a bit more tired than he did the last time Thane had heard him speak, though he didn’t have the best base of knowledge to compare that to. “It would have been an insult to send anyone else—”

“It would have been a _favor_ to send anyone else!” Joker snapped. Thane had gotten close enough to the cockpit that he no longer needed to strain to hear what they were saying, but that closeness came with a cost; as he took a few steps forward, Joker glanced back over his shoulder, spotting him almost immediately. In his worry, he has not been as quiet as he might normally—but Joker doesn’t say anything to him, merely turns back to the open comm. “She _died_ there, or did you forget that in your rush to get her to do more of the work you don’t want to? She remembers it, too. All of it. So you send her to the place where she died, to do some cleanup you didn’t attempt even _once_ in the past two years, and then act all surprised when it goes to shit? I don’t buy it.” He scoffs, loud enough that Thane suspects he would have been able to hear it even were he still at the end of the hall. “And just so you know how fucked up this all is—she’s in the medbay, because she turned all the support systems in her suit off and now she’s _hypothermic_.”

It feels as though a fist has clenched tight around his heart when he hears the words. He’d assumed it was bad—there wouldn’t have been so much commotion if it wasn’t—but hypothermia was something else entirely, and he could only hope that Garrus had found her in time for it to only be a mild case. It seems Hackett is just as surprised by the severity of the situation as Thane himself, because for a moment there is only deafening silence through the comm, and then, uncharacteristically hesitant, “What you have to understand is—”

And then nothing. The comm is cut off with no warning, and Joker leans back in his chair, cursing loudly. This would be the opportune moment for Thane to slip away, to pretend he hasn’t heard anything, but before he can even move, Joker speaks again, and this time there is no doubt who the words are directed at.

“CJ used to do that all the time,” he says. “She’d call up the Council after whatever life-threatening mission they sent her on so she could, you know, give them valuable information about Saren, but they never took her seriously. Shows what they know.” He scoffs. “Anyway, she’d always end up cutting them off. It never got old, too. If the Council tried to call her right now, she’d probably do the same thing.”

It takes Thane a moment to realize he’s talking about Shepard—he’s never heard anyone refer to her as anything besides her last name, or as Commander. He doesn’t even know what the initials stand for; it embarrasses him, suddenly, that he’s never thought to ask, considering how close they’ve gotten in recent weeks.

“She went back for me. Did she ever tell you that?”

He shakes his head automatically before he realizes he’s out of Joker’s line of sight, and steps a bit closer to the chair, farther into the cockpit. “No. She’s never spoken to me about the crash.”

“Yeah, and if you asked the Alliance, they’d have no idea why.” Joker scoffs, shaking his head. Thane can only see his profile from where he’s standing, but it’s enough. “Everyone but the two of us had evacuated—everyone who could still be saved, anyway. I was so damn sure I could maneuver the ship out of there. Stubborn, she’d call it. And she went back for me.” He shakes his head again, though there is distinctly less tension in the movement now; he looks thoughtful in a way that Thane has never seen. “She hauled me to the last escape pod and shoved me in, but—something happened. I don’t know. An explosion knocked her back. And it launched before she could get to it.”

Guilt—that’s the thing that’s different. He blames himself for Shepard’s death, in much the same way that Thane blames himself for Irikah’s attack. He knows that, in the moment, there wasn’t much he could have done, but for those first few years his mind circled obsessively around it, picking out every little misstep that led to it. Joker has even less culpability here than Thane can claim, but being there to watch it happen—he can’t even begin to imagine. He doesn’t want to think of her like that.

“You know what the worst part is?” he asks, and this time he doesn’t even wait for an answer. “I know she’d do it again. When I first saw her, she told me _not_ to blame myself. But if I try to tell her the same thing about this, she won’t listen.” Thane is still standing too far behind the chair to see much more than the side of his face, the top of his hat, and he thinks it is better this way. As much as he is angry at himself for avoiding it, this is not a memory he wishes to have. “People talk about her and they say she’s callous, and cold, and bitchy, and—whatever. I could go on. And she absolutely _is_ all of those things. She’s probably the most terrifying person I’ve ever met. But what the Alliance has apparently forgotten is that there’s a _person_ under there, and she feels just like the rest of us, no matter what Cerberus stuck in when they rebuilt her.”

The words ring painfully true, and not only because he’s had to spend the past couple of months figuring out who, exactly, he is after ten years of battle-sleep. The person underneath the legend of Commander Shepard is becoming more and more familiar to him, the hazy edges refining into something sharp and defined. He’s only caught glimpses of the full picture—a frame turned face-down on her desk, the drip of blood over her arms, the barest hint of her relationship with her family—and every piece only makes him more certain of what he already knows. He loves her. He has for some time.

“You should talk to her once she’s—uh—better.” There’s an air of finality to the words; Thane knows they’re meant as a dismissal. “I don’t know if she’ll listen, but you might have a better shot than anyone else here.”

“I will…take that under consideration.” It’s a flimsy attempt to hide whatever is between him and Shepard. There have already been comments directed at her—from Garrus, mostly—about the amount of time she spends in Life Support. For her sake, he’d rather keep the rumors from getting any worse, even if there might be some factual basis to them. Even if he wants them to be based in fact more than he’d like to admit. It’s as good a dismissal as any, though, and he’s turning away from the cockpit, preparing himself for a long night listening for news of her, when another thought hits him, and he stops mid-stride. “Do you know how many tags she was able to retrieve?”

“Twenty, I think,” Joker says, and a weight settles heavy in his stomach.

~

She doesn’t call Thane up to her quarters until two days later, and he spends the whole time pacing, worrying, occasionally asking EDI for updates even when she can no longer provide any. The silence becomes oppressive, ringing in his ears even as he takes to meditating in an attempt to close it out. This is the first time since he heard of Kolyat’s arrival on the Citadel that he finds it does not work. He cannot get the image of her—frozen, breaths shallow, barely able to move—out of his mind, even though he had not been there when Garrus brought her back. He suspects that, in this case, the visual his imagination has provided him is worse than the reality. Telling himself that doesn’t help.

It does help, though, when EDI informs him that the Commander has asked him to come up to her cabin, when he’s got a minute. He is up before the message is even finished, biting out a quick thanks as he exits Life Support and heads for the elevator. Aside from crossing the hall to the restroom, it’s the first time he’s left since Shepard’s return, and he notices a couple of people outside the crew quarters staring at him as he steps into the elevator and pushes the button that will take him up to her room. He can’t bring himself to pay them any true mind. She is the only thing he can think of.

The memory of her after Zorya, the trickles of blood running down her skin, the way she refused to call it what it is—these things have haunted him, and they are still at the forefront of his thoughts when the elevator stops outside of her cabin, when he presses the button by the door to let her know he’s there. The ten seconds before it slides open are, perhaps, the longest in his life, an exercise in agony. It is nothing, though, compared to the sinking feeling when she allows him inside, and he gets a first look at her, and she seems…normal.

Maybe he should have expected as much. She’s certainly had the time to pull herself together, and it would be like her to take advantage of it, to let as few people as possible see what this has done to her. It stings, though, to know that she asked him to come here, only to show him the mask she’ll wear in front of everyone else tomorrow. He had thought—after Kolyat, after finding her all but covered in her own blood, after the things she’d told him in Life Support—they were past this.

“Shepard.” He stops himself before any—endearments—can slip out. She won’t have forgotten that he promised to tell her what the nickname means, and even if he was certain he’s ready for such a conversation, he doubts she is. Not after this. Instead he lets his gaze slide over her, cataloguing every way in which she tries to hide the evidence of Alchera. Her hair is pulled back, her lips painted to conceal any signs of nervousness. Her oversized hoodie falls to the tops of her thighs and, besides a pair of black socks, is also the only thing she appears to be wearing. It covers her arms, but some of the tension in him eases when he glances at her legs, trying not to let his eyes linger, and doesn’t see any new marks—just the scars from Project Lazarus, bright against her skin.

“It’s been two days.” She shifts away from his stare, the only indication of discomfort he’s seen since he walked in. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’s gone now.”

Part of him wishes they wouldn’t talk around it. Surely they have seen enough of each other by now. “How many were there?”

“Tags, you mean?” It’s almost frustrating how easily she diverts any attention from herself back onto the mission. The dead. It would be chiding if he wasn’t certain she’s doing it to deflect. “Twenty.” A pause, only long enough for her to brush back a loose strand of hair. Her nails are as neat as ever, coated in dark polish with no signs of wear. “No bodies, though.” When she does look back at him, it’s difficult to read. The mask is fully in place now, even here, even with him. “So, what? You just wanted to make sure I’m—okay?”

It is difficult not to be irritated with her, when she’s like this. At the same time, he realizes how much of it is born from the need to be a leader—to never let anyone see her falter, even for a second. But she has faltered now, and the whole ship knows, and so the walls come back up stronger. Knowing does not make it easier. It makes him want to take her in his arms, show her that there is nothing wrong with stumbling. He wants to kiss her, but that would be even more unwise now than it would have been the last time they were alone in her quarters.

“You were hypothermic,” he says instead, watching as she pulls her lower lip between her teeth. It won’t be long before he’ll be able to see the blood beading on the skin; he’s watched her do it for weeks now. His mind is full to bursting with memories of watching her across the table in Life Support, of the little nervous habits he’s picked up on when she thinks no one is watching.

“And you’re overreacting.” Her mouth smooths out into a thin line for a moment, and then she’s turning, resting her hands flat on the desk in front of her so she won’t have to look at him. He still hasn’t stepped any farther into the room. “I knew you’d be worried. I called you up here so you can see that I’m fine. That’s it.”

“Siha—”

“ _Don’t_.”

He can see her tense even under the hoodie, the sudden stiffness in her shoulders, and he moves closer to her, not pausing when her spine goes rigid at the movement. If she truly wants to stop him, she can—but she doesn’t, and when he puts a hand on her shoulder she doesn’t immediately push it off. He doesn’t know if he can call it progress, but it’s not nothing, either. “Then don’t blame yourself for this.”

“How can I not?” The change is so sudden that it’s difficult for him to reconcile the woman who stands in front of him now with _Commander Shepard_ —with who she had appeared to be mere seconds ago. “The Collectors were after me. They still are.” When she lets her head hang she tilts it to the side, and he gets the impression that she wishes she’d taken her hair down, another distancing mechanism. She’s vulnerable now in a way that she isn’t usually, but there is no way to reassure her without calling attention to it. There has always been the possibility that a wrong word would force his departure—perhaps not from the ship as a whole, but certainly from her quarters, and from whatever it is that’s been growing between them. It’s been years since he’s let anyone this close; he doesn’t remember how to do this, but he might not be the only one.

He looks at his own hand on her shoulder, lets it press down gently. “And you’ll stop them.”

“You’re awfully confident for someone who’s only known me a couple months.”

“You have given me no reason to doubt you.” She ducks her head further. Sometime in the past few moments, his hand strayed closer to the join of her neck and shoulder, to where he can see skin. “You are…”

Another sentence he can’t bring himself to finish for fear of what it might mean. She relaxes under his hand, though, straightens but doesn’t turn. He hadn’t realized just how _close_ they’re standing, but it’s obvious now and it’s all he can think about. “Thane?” she asks, and when he tightens his hand again in lieu of a verbal reply, continues. “What does it mean?”

It’s quiet, then, for a minute. He pulls his hand away, and she turns around and leans back against the desk, her own fingers gripping the edge. It was going to happen, it might as well be now, but even though he’s spent days thinking about exactly this moment, the words won’t come. “I’d like to ask you something first, if I may,” he says. She nods, though there’s a crease between her eyebrows like she’s worried he’ll ask something she doesn’t want to answer. “I don’t know your first name.”

The furrow deepens before she seems to realize what he’s said, and then she laughs—short and quiet and surprising. “That’s not a question. But I’m going to guess you’ve been talking to Joker.” She leans back even further and turns her head away, staring in the direction of the fish tank. “It’s Celia. Cecelia Jane.”

“Ah.” The corner of her mouth turns up, like she was expecting more out of him, but there’s nothing to say about it except that it suits her, and he doubts she wants to hear that. True, he could have easily found out at any time simply by looking up her records, but the more he’s gotten to know her the more it had felt like a breach of privacy, considering she so clearly didn’t want anyone to use it. Besides, he already knows that the way it sounds coming from her mouth is something he’ll revisit often.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” she says, and her voice is still so soft, the kind of softness usually reserved for— _not_ whatever they are. Not yet. “It’s just a question.”

“No, I…” He clears his throat, ignoring the pointed look she throws his way at the sound. “I will explain. But I need to explain myself to you first.”

If there is one good thing about her terseness, he thinks, it is that she lets him take his time. He paces in front of the desk for a moment, slow and unhurried, and stops only slightly closer to her than he had been, at her side this time. She glances down at his hands, then back up to him, and though he wants it to be an invitation, he doesn’t move. “When I married Irikah, the hanar let me leave their service to raise a family. But I had no other skills, so I freelanced. When Irikah was killed, I pursued those responsible. Once I’d eliminated them, I had no goal. I accepted the Dantius commission because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Not the healthiest attitude to take on a mission.” She catches her lip between her teeth again, like she regrets saying it. “Rich coming from me, I know.” He lets himself, then, reach out to brush his fingers over her own. If nothing else, he can do this.

“You’re right. It’s not.” It isn’t as though they’ve never come into contact with each other, but this feels—different. Enough that he can let himself hope. “Looking back now, it’s clear I’d resigned myself to death. I would have fulfilled my contract. If Nassana’s guards caught me afterwards—it would have been a good death. But someone else was pushing to reach the target. Forcing me to move faster. Challenging me. I had to reach her first.”

She doesn’t interrupt this time, but he can almost hear her— _challenging you?_ —and her smirk is distracting enough. It drops as quickly as it had appeared. “I had no plan. My body had accepted its death. My mind had been dead a long time. But I met another siha. Few are privileged to meet even one.”

There—the smile again. He wonders if she’ll ever stop doing things that surprise him. Hopes not. “You still haven’t told me what a siha _is_.” Coming from anyone else, the words would sound almost chiding; even if they’d been coming from her in any other situation. Patience, he’s learned, is not a virtue she has much of. But she doesn’t sound impatient, only curious. A little apprehensive—or perhaps that’s his own mind, reminding him once again of just how _long_ it’s been since he’s done anything like this.

“One of the warrior-angels of the goddess Arashu. Fierce in wrath. A tenacious protector.” Her lips part, not enough to indicate that she’s trying to speak, but enough to show—something. The furrow in her brow is back, and he catalogues all these things with a slowly-growing sense of dread. She had been the one to flirt first, he reminds himself. And even if she is not interested in more than that—well, she hasn’t told him to leave yet. “I confess, I’ve come to care for you. Perhaps I’m being foolish. We are very different.”

The silence feels different, thicker somehow, now that everything is out in the open. She won’t look at him. He notes distantly that there’s the slightest flush to her face, partially hidden by the glow from her scars when she turns her head. “I—” She’s the one to clear her throat this time. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that he is not the only one out of his depth here. “I feel something for you too. Something more than friendship. I don’t know if—well.”

She nods, as if that finalizes it. Her hand slides over to cover his, resting only a few inches away. She seems more relaxed than he’s ever seen her, and he too feels as though a weight has been lifted off him. Whatever else happens now—they have this. “I’ve never felt affection for another species. I’m…not sure what to do now.”

Her scars catch the light when she smiles. He’s never seen her without them, and despite what the doctor recommended, and the fact that the technology to fix them is readily available, he doesn’t think he wants to. “I don’t know,” she says, a teasing edge to her voice that he’s never heard before. “I think we can figure it out.”

~

Even though he knows he’ll be able to recall it later with perfect clarity, in the moment he can’t say how he ended up on the sofa across from the bed with Celia in his lap, her fingers running across his frills. One of his hands is in her hair, which she’d paused to tug down after she straddled him; the other has made its way under her newly-unzipped hoodie to trace over her back, and—he’d done his research, had hoped something like this might happen, but he still hadn’t expected _this_. Her skin is soft and warm, hotter still around the edges of the scars, and the taste of blood on her lips from where she’s bitten them is of no consequence, if only he can keep kissing her like this. But they both draw back soon enough; now isn’t the time for that, when they’ll be on their way to the Collector ship soon enough, and he means to take his time with her. As she slides off him and he stands to leave, though, she reaches out to grab his hand.

“I…” Something in his chest tightens to see her like this, hair mussed and lips swollen but meeting his gaze nonetheless, though only for a second before it flits to the bed. “I’d rather not…be alone. I haven’t slept much since—” Her teeth are on her lip again. He notices it more and more now. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to stay?”

He knows without saying what it must cost her to ask, especially after spending the past days in such a vulnerable state. But he smiles, and lets her pull him back down, and wonders at how she is here, now, exactly where he’d needed her to be. “I would like nothing more.”

**Author's Note:**

> "he doesn't know her first name even though he could've found out because he respects her privacy and no one else uses it so why should he" is. honestly one of my favorite headcanons and i don't care whether it's accurate or not. that mug on the table in life support is full of Respecting Shepard Juice aldkjalfkjalfk (also "what do u mean u lost shepard" was my fav part to write and i Also don't care if it's out of character)
> 
> there's possibly one more thing for trilogy week if i can bring myself to write it because it's super sad...if not it'll still get posted at some point but maybe i've had my fill of angst for now? we'll see


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